It’s well known that exercise is good for your heart. But the benefits of regular exercise literally spread through your entire body via your arteries.
“We have arteries all over our bodies — in our arms and legs, our heart and other major organs, they’re almost everywhere,” says Hicham Skali, MD, MSc, a Mass General Brigham cardiologist. Dr. Skali is the medical director of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Diseases can change the nature and structure of our arteries, affecting their ability to deliver enough blood to the rest of the body.”
But exercise can help you keep your arteries younger and healthier. The healthier your arteries, the lower your risk of heart disease, stroke, heart attacks, hypertension (high blood pressure), and high cholesterol.
“Regular exercise is one of the best ways to maintain artery health. In some cases, exercise is like a very effective super-pill that may lower cholesterol numbers and blood pressure,” Dr. Skali says.
What do arteries do?
Arteries are the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood from your heart to the rest of your body. Veins, on the other hand, are blood vessels that take oxygen-poor blood back to the heart to be reoxygenated. Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels, and they transport blood between your arteries and veins.
Like the rest of the human body, arteries age and lose function over time. They can get stiff and narrow, and plaque (small deposits of fat and waste) can stick to their interior walls. All these effects can reduce blood flow and increase pressure on arterial walls. But regular exercise can keep arteries open and make them more efficient.
Get regular exercise to lower blood pressure and maintain vascular health.
Any type of exercise can help maintain arterial health and overall heart health, Dr. Skali says. And an exercise that uses just one body part actually helps all of your arteries everywhere.
Aerobic exercise, often called cardio, is excellent for arterial health. When your heart pumps faster during aerobic exercise, it pushes more blood through the arteries. This keeps the arteries wider and more flexible, reducing blood pressure and making arteries less likely to collect plaque. Examples of aerobic exercise include walking, running, dancing, rowing, and swimming.
Strength training, or resistance training, is also important for arterial health. Strength training affects blood pressure by increasing lean muscle mass. More muscle gives your cardiovascular system somewhere to send blood that’s being pumped. This puts less pressure on your arteries. Examples of this type of exercise include weightlifting or bodyweight exercises.
The benefits of regular exercise
Exercise has many positive effects on vascular health:
- Delivers more oxygenated blood throughout the body to keep tissues and organs healthy
- Improves metabolism, which helps control blood glucose (blood sugar), burn fats, and maintain or decrease body weight
- Increases production of nitric oxide, which relaxes the inner muscles of your blood vessels
- Prompts the body to make more capillaries in your muscles, giving muscles more oxygen and increasing muscle efficiency
- Increases mitochondria, small structures inside cells that create energy
- Reduces inflammation throughout the body
- Widens arteries and makes them more flexible, decreasing resistance and blood pressure
With healthy arteries, you have a lower risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart failure. This lowers the chances of cardiovascular events such as cardiac death, stroke, and heart attack.
Dr. Skali emphasizes that regular exercise isn’t just for those who are looking to prevent heart problems. It can help people whose heart muscle is already damaged. Although exercise can’t clear existing plaque from clogged arteries, it can help prevent further accumulation.
Additional health benefits of exercise
Exercise has many other benefits for your overall health. It can:
